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Can’t we all just … be vegans?
biodiversivist , Gristmill
The average American weighs about 170 pounds, eats about 180 pounds of meat, gets about 24 mpg, has about two kids, owns about one-third of a cat or dog, and lives in a 2,350-square-foot home. There are lots of ways to alter your carbon footprint. Depending on your personal proclivities, some ways are “easier” than others. You get to pick what is “easiest” for you. For some, the “easiest” thing to do is not have kids. For others it is to go car-free. Not having cats and dogs is easy for many. Choosing a small, energy-efficient home, condo, or apartment works great for some. Eating less meat or less environmentally destructive meats is also an option. This explains why a street person (being largely child-free, car-free, pet-free, meat-free, and homeless) would win any carbon-footprint pissing match. I suppose one could eat meat but still promote veganism, just as I support women’s reproductive rights even though I have two children.
Here in America, corn ethanol is supposed to be about 13 percent carbon neutral, and soy biodiesel about 40 percent. Let’s say just for the sake of discussion that the less meat you eat, the more vegan you are. Eating no meat makes you 100-percent vegan (100-percent meat neutral). Eating half the national average would make you 50-percent vegan, and eating the national average would make you 0-percent vegan. The beauty of this concept is that we all get to be vegans! I put together a spreadsheet to see how your degree of veganism compares to other choices when it comes to carbon neutrality
(17 September 2007)
The most recent post from Grist/Gristmill on the issue. Others:
On meat eating and global warming (Umbra Fisk)
Vegetarianism and environmentalism (David Roberts)
PETA’s dogma is all bark and no bite (Alex Roth)
UPDATE (Sept 18): At Gristmill, PETA VP argues vegetarianism is the best way to help the planet
Return of GM: ministers back moves to grow crops in UK
Alok Jha, The Guardian
Climate concerns will reduce chance of new public backlash, says industry
—
Government ministers have given their backing to a renewed campaign by farmers and industry to introduce genetically modified crops to the UK, the Guardian has learned.
They believe the public will now accept that the technology is vital to the development of higher-yield and hardier food for the world’s increasing population and will help produce crops that can be used as biofuels in the fight against climate change.
“GM will come back to the UK; the question is how it comes back, not whether it’s coming back,” said a senior government source.
Attempts to introduce GM to Britain in the late 1990s met a wave of direct action from activists tearing up crops. At the same time supermarkets such as Sainsbury’s and Marks & Spencer barred GM ingredients from their ranges for fear of provoking a consumer backlash.
In 2004, the government announced that no GM crops would be grown in the country for the “foreseeable future”, prompting Lord Peter Melchett, policy director of the Soil Association to declare: “This is the end of GM in Britain.”
Recent polls also revealed that about 70% of the European public remained opposed to GM foods.
(17 September 2007)
Not so Corny: Fuel Shortages May Hurt Corn Harvesting
Reuters
Fuel shortages in the U.S. Midwest are raising concerns corn farmers may have trouble harvesting their bumper crop this autumn.
Farmers planted the largest corn crop since 1944 last spring after prices hit a 10-year high of $4.37 a bushel in early 2007. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has estimated a record crop of more than 13 billion bushels.
But farmers said supplies of the ultra low sulfur diesel needed for harvesting equipment are running low, particularly in the corn-growing regions of Minnesota, Nebraska, and Iowa.
In Iowa, fuel shortages are anticipated as retailers report having only about 80 percent of their normal supply, said John Scott, a corn and soy farmer in west central Iowa.
“Worse case scenario is our crop stands in the field until we have fuel to harvest it,” said Scott, who has stored about one week’s supply of fuel in anticipation of shortages, but not enough to tide him over for the six-week harvest season.
…The diesel problems are adding to overall farmer concerns about the skyrocketing costs of growing corn, which they say will erode additional profits from this year’s high prices.
Rising fertilizer costs, driven by the soaring prices of the natural gas used to make it, is the main culprit. Fertilizer has jumped from about $200 per ton to around $500 per ton over the last year, said Minnesota Corn Growers Association’s Watson.
(7 September 2007)
Contributor Jim writes:
Even with record corn prices and a mad scramble for ethanol, farmers are not going to reap much from their harvest. They, like everyone else, are at the cold mercy of logistics. Despite the ethanol “revolution” they’re caught out with machines that use the wrong kind of fuel…diesel. Until the corn goes through the cumbersome process of refinement into oil and then bio-diesel, it is useless to them. Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink…
And then there’s the cost of the mono-culture system that relies on Natural Gas inputs to “fertilize” their fields. A classic one-two punch.
Make or break time for harvest
Peter Weekes, The Age
THE next two weeks will determine if hundreds of farmers will be forced off their land and food prices soar as major crop-growing regions, still gripped by drought, wait for the long-promised rain.
This Tuesday the Federal Government’s agricultural forecasting body, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE), will release its updated outlook for the sector. It will confirm the situation has deteriorated rapidly since its upbeat appraisal in June.
“Conditions have certainly changed,” ABARE’s commodities manager, Vince O’Donnell, told The Sunday Age. “There are quite a few areas that have been observed at the moment that are drying out fairly rapidly.”
This will come as no surprise to those in the farming sector. As the price of wheat hit a record high of $US9 ($A10.70) a bushel on world markets last week, farmers in western NSW were turning their crops into animal fodder. The odds are shortening that Victorian farmers will soon be forced to do the same.
And it’s not just wheat and cereals. The shelf price of milk, vegetables, fruit, lamb, beef, pork and even imported canned goods are all expected to rise slightly, or soar – depending on rain.
“You are looking at a very diabolical scenario starting to unfold if this rain doesn’t materialise in the next couple of weeks, and that will flow into food inflation,” said Michael Keogh, executive director of the Australian Farm Institute.
…Following a drought, the quickest way for farmers to re-establish cash flow is to plant crops. After good initial rains at the start of this season, and spurred on by the prediction of above-average rainfall for the year from La Nina, farmers planted record crops. But the lack of winter and spring rain has meant much of the wheat and cereal is substandard and only useful as animal feed.
“Things started to turn very sour very quickly, and now there are real concerns starting to emerge that many farmers will not get a crop at all,” Mr Keogh said.
(16 September 2007)
